The Tyrant of Mar-a-Lago

In the new world of politics that emerged out of the rubble of the Cold War, we all started getting used to hearing about ‘oligarchs’. These were originally Russians: Boris Berezovsky was an early example. As the USSR collapsed by some magic he had managed to become the owner or part-owner of a succession of state enterprises, including TV channels, oil companies and Aeroflot, the state airline.

The logic was easy to grasp. For all the problems with the Soviet economy, which had been on the verge of collapse for decades, the sheer size of the USSR meant that any state industries operated on a correspondingly vast scale. All these enterprises had been state-owned, but the Soviet state no longer existed, so there was a scramble to ‘acquire’ them, to put it politely, or ‘steal’ them to call a spade a spade.

Berezovsky started using his money and influence to play politics, financing Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign and allegedly trying to intervene in the Chechen war as well; and ended up being murdered in his London home for his troubles when he tried to resist Putin.

The first wave of the people we now call oligarchs were sometimes either too greedy, or failed to develop a working relationship with Vladimir Putin when the Wild West atmosphere of the 1990s was replaced by a return to KGB methods. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the richest oligarch of all, acquiring control of the Yukos oil company, but was only arrested and imprisoned, not falling out of a window or hanging himself. There are some survivors, notably Roman Abramovich, a well-known figure in England as former owner of Chelsea Football Club. A former business associate of Berezovsky, he managed to side-step the reaction against the 90s zillionaires, and continues as one of the 20 or so surviving ‘oligarchs’.

But now we see the term being applied to Americans, Elon Musk being the obvious example, but the familiar gang of ‘tech bros’ also qualifying. This is mystifying. In Russia, and also in China, there are ultra-rich individuals who have outwitted the system of state ownership, but this is not at all how Zuckerberg and Bezos have become so rich and powerful.

So what does this word ‘oligarch’ mean? Where does it come from?

It is an ancient Greek word, and comes from ancient Greek political theory, and in particular that of the philosopher Aristotle. It means ‘rule by the few’, and is a particular type of political system.

To explain the background a little, in classical times there was no Greek state. Greece was not a country in the modern sense, but a collection of Greek-speaking city-states of various sizes, with Athens playing a leading role. Different city-states had different forms of government, with the main rival of Athens, Sparta, having a military system in which the army was the state. Many city-states had their own kings, but there were many variants that were tried out at one time or other. Aristotle tried to analyse this in a theoretical framework, and his ideas are still the basis of much of our modern ideas about the structure of politics. ‘Democracy’ is a term from this body of theory, meaning ‘rule by the people’, but widely understood in the Greek concept as ‘mob rule’, and therefore as a bad thing.

It was neither democracy nor mob rule in modern terms, as this was a slave-owning society, so the people allowed to vote were not penniless sans-culottes, but prosperous private individuals who personally and collectively owned other people to do any work that was necessary.

Aristotle thought that it was self-evident that the best kind of rule was aristocratic rule, as ‘aristocracy’ means ‘rule of the best’, so it is hard to see how that could possibly be a bad thing. A degenerate form of this was ‘oligarchy’, where it was not the moral superiority of coming from an aristocratic family that granted power, but simply wealth. This was also related to the other degenerate concept of democracy. As Aristotle put it, ‘oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands (…) wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.’

By this standard, Putin’s Russia does seem to be an oligarchy, if the few anti-Putin opposition figures are to be believed. The ‘deal’ to use Trumpian language, or the ‘Grand Alliance’ to sound more Russian-imperial, established by Putin at the turn of the 21^st century seems to have been that unless you wanted to end up like Berezovsky or Khodorovsky, you need to get with the programme, and become a business partner of Putin. He tolerates the wealth of the approved oligarchs, but on the understanding that half of it belongs to him. This is convenient, as bribes for example can be paid to a third party and not personally to the President.

If we turn to America, though, it looks as if it has been an oligarchy since the days of the Robber Barons of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Vanderbilt, Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller… These men were as powerful as Berezovsky and Khodorovsky, and just as disproportionately wealthy. Certain individuals, like Henry Ford, continued this way of life, but as the generations changed, the personal style of oligarchy was mostly replaced by the dominant American model which you could call corporate oligarchy. General Motors and Boeing are not controlled by individuals.

But there is another difference. Actual political leadership in America, as in Russia, is not directly in the hands of an oligarch class, whether personal or corporate. Putin controls the Russian oligarchs; in America it works the other way round. Whether it is Vanderbilt or Carnegie, Boeing or Ford, or nowadays Amazon and SpaceX, the vectors of oligarchic control have been the supposedly democratic processes of government run by the Democrats and the Republicans.

Many people have pointed out what a failure this system is if what you are after is some kind of genuine democracy. Eisenhower warned against the ‘military-industrial complex’, Jimmy Carter warned of ‘unlimited political bribery’, and Biden warned against the power of the new tech oligarchs. But none of it seems to make any difference. America worships wealth, and so it is only natural that wealth should buy political power along with everything else. Like Russians, Americans have never experienced democracy, and seem content to go along with the pretence that corporate oligarchy is in some mystical sense the same thing.

But there is another factor in ancient Greek political theory that deserves a mention. This is the question of legitimacy.

A legitimate leader is one who has a legal right to rule, according to the constitution of the state. Again, remember that the states in question were small, independent city-states, often on the scale of Montenegro or Andorra. But as with so much Greek philosophy, the theory has survived for thousands of years up until today. So the first, most obvious example of a legitimate ruler is a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II, say, was totally legitimate in the UK. Supported by the vast majority of the population, she sat symbolically at the top of a legal and political system that derived its legitimacy from hers.

In other countries, other systems apply. The General Secretary of the USSR was legitimate in terms of the Soviet legal system. Xi Jinping enjoys the same kind of legitimacy in China. In a war of conquest, a new king might arrive, or a whole system might be overthrown and a new system of legitimacy be imposed through a military coup or a foreign invasion.

So Vladimir Putin, for all his myriad faults, is legally installed as the President of the Russian Federation. American presidents at least since the end of the 19^th century have been the hirelings of corporations and sometimes oligarchs, but the whole reason that the money interests need to make use of the fig-leaf of democratic rule is that without it, they would have no legitimacy: no legal title to power.

There was, however, one exception to this. In some cases, the most famous one being that of the Sicilian city-state of Syracuse, an individual would seize power with no pretence at any legal claim. Such a person was known as a tyrant.

In Syracuse, bizarrely, this system of tyranny became the established form of government, lasting (with a few gaps) for some 250 years. So the system of choosing between aristocracy, oligarchy or democracy became irrelevant, as all of these are ultimately based on a mechanism for conferring legitimacy on the actions of the state, the purpose of this being to provide a mechanism for the exercise of the rule of law. For without law, as the Greeks believed, you would have only barbarism (another Greek term, ridiculing those who cannot speak Greek but can only make stupid bar-bar noises).

American presidential elections may be little more than a piece of folk theatre designed to convince a gullible electorate that it is they and not Lockheed Martin who are in charge, but it has always been seen as an important piece of political theatre: until Donald Trump. As his second term unfolds, it is clear that the challenge to the legal order represented by his attempt to deny Joe Biden’s election victory was not an aberration. He has appointed more judges than any other president; it is not to strengthen the rule of law but to defeat it.

The most plausible explanation for this is that Trump has never had any idea how government works, or how the legal system works. As far as he is concerned, the legal system has always been an obstacle to whatever crooked business operation he has in hand, to be dealt with by cunning, lies and of course money. So as President, he can’t understand why the same attitude and methods shouldn’t be applied. His voters evidently don’t mind. The elected officials of the party he has hi-jacked don’t care.

The enemy this time, though, is not some court dealing with building regulations or property rules. It is the Constitution of the United States of America. His basic method is to try out ways of cheating the system, and he constantly butts up against fresh obstacles. In his first term, he wanted to have generals who were personally loyal to him and prepared to act according to his whims and was disgusted that they wanted to follow some bullshit legal rules instead. Does he still want that? Is he getting there? Can he really close down whole government departments? Invade Greenland? Annex Canada?

His ambition is to become a tyrant, in the technical sense used in ancient Greece. A leader who is not a king, as that would imply some kind of legal order beyond personal desire. Not really even a president in the traditional sense, presiding over a legal process of decision-making and legislation. Rule by decree and TV ratings is much better. He doesn’t need politicians or government professionals any more, as business cronies and Fox News personalities are available. In order to achieve this ambition, it seems that he will have to tear down much of the existing legal order.

The court of the Tyrant meets at Mar-a-Lago. Entry is by club membership, at one million dollars a pop. There is no dissent, only adulation. The Tyrant grins. America crumbles.